


Aphelion

by East_Hastings



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 55th Annual Hunger Games, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:26:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/East_Hastings/pseuds/East_Hastings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nineteen years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered to save her sister from the horrors of the Hunger Games, another young woman gave up her life to save someone she loved. This is her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is Aphelion. I don't own the Hunger Games or Panem; those belong to Suzanne. I also don't own Heliquo; he appears by the grace of V. Arrow.
> 
> Reviews make me write faster. They also make me write a better story.

When I have the dream, it's always the same. I can rewind, pause, fast forward at will. I can look around the rooms and know exactly what's going to be there, because nearly one year ago, I was there. The one thing I can't do is stop it from happening.

I'm standing in the Lisker apartment's living room, and the broadcast is on. Lindo, Quilla and Rivassa, like me, are glued to the forest on the screen. Even though it's light here and all across Panem, the forest is completely dark. Like all things in the Arena, the Gamemakers control night and day.

A squirrel chatters in one of the trees. An owl hoots. A young woman with bruises on her face and leaves in her hair tiptoes through the moss. Her olive-green jacket is so torn that the number 8 on her shoulder is barely distinguishable. A branch cracks somewhere in the distance, and her eyes dart left, right, left again. Seeing no other tributes, she silently crawls forward.

She abruptly stops and raises her right hand to her face. It's smeared with fresh, red blood. The leaves, the moss, the branches on the ground are sticky. She looks up.

"Ah!" She shouts. She recoils, scrambling backwards on the ground. The camera pulls away from her to show Panem what she has seen. Something is hanging from the tree. Something, which a few hours ago might have once been recognizable as someone, but that time is long gone.

"My..." The girl retches and throws up. The thing in the tree's skin lies in bloody strips on the ground below it. It is completely naked, hanging by its arms, its shoulders long dislocated. Quilla covers Rivassa's eyes.

"Why hasn't the hovercraft come to pick that up?" the girl from District 8 gasps between heaves.

The thing in the tree blinks. Its mouth opens. Closes.

"You're alive," she whispers in a combination of pity and disgust. "Who are you?"

She bends down. A shredded jacket lies in the bloody mess below the thing-person. She spreads the jacket out, looking for some way to identify the thing. The number on the shoulder. 5.

Instantly we hear cries from the apartments above us, below us, around us. Rivassa screams and runs down the hall into her room. Lindo grips the arm of the couch. The veins in his pale hand stand out like lines on a map.

On the screen. "Do you want me to get you down?" the girl from 8 says, tears in her eyes. The thing barely nods. She climbs up the tree and saws through the ropes tying the thing's wrists to the low limb. Its feet are only hanging about a foot above the ground, but it collapses as soon as it hits the moss.

"What did - who - "

The thing slowly raises two fingers. District 2. The girl this year from 2 is unhinged. She's already slashed a twelve-year-old's eyes open and set him at the entrance of a wolf's den. The Gamemakers will arrange a convenient accident for her later.

"Here, I'll help you," the girl from 8 whispers. "My dad's a doctor." She slams the thing's shoulders into place. It shakes its head. Not enough. She is crying now.

"Can you walk?" she asks, though she knows what the answer will be.

The thing shakes its head. It points. Its legs are shattered. "Please..." the thing rattles. "Make it stop."

The girl from 8 nods, her hands shaking. She pulls a long knife from her belt and tests the blade on her own finger. Not sharp enough. She pulls a stone from her pocket and begins to run it down the blade.

"Mother," the thing says slowly, under the grating of the sharpener. "Father. Rivassa." Quilla's hands clutch her heart. Rivassa has appeared again, behind the couch. She says what we all are saying, everyone in District 5, saying in our hearts.

"Matias," she breathes.

"Shan," the thing that was called Matias whispers. "I love you all. I love you so much."

The girl tests the blade again. Sharp. She looks at him. "Please," he says.

Her hands, slick with blood. They find his jugular vein. I can't look away.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry."

Her arm, off camera, moves. He goes limp. Blood on her jacket, on the ground, everywhere. She closes his eyes. The hovercraft is already there. She stands watching as the claw descends from the sky and lifts the body into the craft's belly.

And the knocking starts. "Shan!" The voices are screaming for me. "Shan! Shan!"

That's when I always wake up and I'm lying in my bed next to Rivassa and the knocking on the door is not the neighbors waiting to scream and weep and sympathize. It's just Quilla knocking to get us up for school and Matias is dead again and I have to get up with the taste of blood in my mouth where I've bitten my tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't own Panem or the Games. The Repros, Thin Girls and Heliquo appear by the grace of V. Arrow.

I spit into the sink and it's red.

"You were tossing around," Rivassa says as she pulls her school uniform on. She wears a size 4, the kind they usually give to the ten year olds because even though she's thirteen she's skinny like a lightpole and short with no chest to speak of. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"Don't worry, Rivassa-ke," I say, tacking on the old District 5 term of endearment. "Just get yourself ready. If you're late again Mrs. Nakoti's going to come after me for not getting you there on time."

Rivassa's a bit different from the other girls. She's quiet and takes huge books with her to school which she reads during lunch. She loves to read, but she doesn't answer the teacher's questions the way the teacher wants her to answer them, so she gets picked on a lot by the other kids for that. They used to say that her face looked funny too, but they don't say that anymore. The pointy skinny face and straight brown hair just reminds everyone of Matias now, so if they think that her face looks funny they keep their mouths shut. Now they tease her because she looks younger and they say boys won't like her because who wants to kiss a girl who looks like she belongs with the baby classes. When that happens I know she tries not to care, but sometimes I see her being sulky and curled-up on the bed after school and I know Senkie or Lelia was especially mean.

At school today no one's concentrating, especially the other eighteen-year-olds, because tomorrow's Reaping Day and we know someone, probably someone that's sitting in our room, won't be there when we go back to school on Monday. I think the teachers know that, because when Morella whose name's in the bowl tomorrow thirty times faints, Mr. Gikalli just lets us talk for the rest of the day.

After school I don't meet Rivassa. The Community Home is about a fifteen minute walk from school in the opposite direction of the Liskers' building, but it's a warm day so I don't mind it. Summer proper will be here soon. District 5 is one of the last districts to get to summer every year and everyone seems happier once they can walk around in their short sleeves. It's a cruel tradeoff; summer brings warm days and swimming in the ponds with friends, but it also brings the Hunger Games and two dead children.

Once during my lifetime, it was one dead kid, when Maelln Daren won, but that was long, a long time ago. She used to watch me and Sorima when I was small and Mother had to work late at the Plant. I was eight years old and I remember standing in the crowd with Mother when she came home for her Victory Tour. Now I see her every year, along with the other Victors, on reaping day. Every year she seems to have a new Capitol surgery: fish-scale tattoos on her whole body or hair a red that's not found in nature or long, curved claws for nails, and always, the huge holes in her earlobes that get bigger every year. I don't think she spends much time in the Victor's Village.

But usually it's two kids that get on that train and none come back. District 5's industry, as advertised, is energy. In the center of the district is the Plant, which employs most of District 5. Lindo and Quilla work there, and when Rivassa and I are old enough we'll go work there too. We're not a fighter-breeding district. We don't have the money to spend on training kids for the Hunger Games before their names are even picked, and I've always thought the districts like 1 and 2 that have training centers are a bit backwards. Even if there are four kids in the arena every year that've spent their lives being groomed for the Games, only one can come out in the end.

Last year one of the Trained Tributes won, a girl from 1. The girl from 8, the girl that stood over Matias's body as the hovercraft carried it away, was killed by lion-mutts in the final battle. I knew those lion-mutts. My friend Chmiela had to Gestate the initial batch.

After a few blocks, I near the Community Home. It still gives me the jumps every time I go near it. District 5 may advertise itself as the power-producing district, but those who live here know of its second industry, the one that doesn't appear on the district seal. Under the Community Home lies a network of laboratories, and through there every female orphan of the District passes, to be poked, prodded, and Implanted with muttation fetuses until they can barely walk. From the time they are twelve until the time they are eighteen, they are obligated to serve the District in this way. Repro on even years - twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. Thin Girl on odd - thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen. The boys have to help in the labs too, cleaning equipment and injecting monkeys and the like, but everyone knows that if you're a District 5 girl with one parent the Community Home is hoping the second will die or get so desperate for money that they'll sign you up for a Repro year so they'll have a new incubator.

Every one of the orphans has to put their name in for tesserae. The Community Home Director from the Capitol is a fat pig of a woman who spends all the funding for the Home on lux from District 1. By the time they're eighteen, the Repros have their name in the Hunger Games bucket eleven times, more if they have siblings, but seventeen's really the most dangerous year. It's the duty of the fifteen and seventeen-year-old Thin Girls to volunteer for the Repros if they get Reaped. Every female orphan in the District passes through those hell years. Every one except me.

When I get to Chmiela's bed on the third sub-level, her already moonish face is swollen but she's smiling. "Hey, Shani-ke." She waves. "School crazy today?"

Lyvriel turns over to see me, her dark hair hanging in her face. "Bet it was."

Alegria, the fourth member of our little group, is asleep across the ward and doesn't stir. "Is she okay?" I ask.

Chmiela shrugs. "Two days and she's done. I think they're prepping her for the Dishing right after we get back from the Reaping. They didn't want to do it this early but they have to. One of the little bastards almost ruptured her lining and they had to pump her full of sedatives so they'd calm down. I think it's going to be a bad batch. The good news is this is her last one no matter what."

"How they're going to get her on two feet for the Reaping, I don't know."

"What have they got in her?" I ask.

"Some sort of food animal. A combination of a pig and something else. I know it's got horns. Supposed to be tastier," says Lyvriel. "Not that we'll ever get a chance to find out what that tastes like." She sighs.

"Shut up." A voice comes from under a blanket halfway down the ward. "I'm trying to sleep here."

Chmiela huffs in aggravation and lowers her voice. "It's Norinal. She's not in a good mood today."

"Norinal's never in a good mood," I return, and Chmiela giggles, and Chmiela has such a happy face even through the pain of whatever-they've-put-in-her-this-time that I can't help but laugh too, but if I were in Norinal's place I probably wouldn't be disposed to good moods either. The Community Home pays a pittance to its orphans when they turn nineteen to thank them for their years of work; enough to survive for maybe six months outside the Home in the cheapest, most rat-eaten apartments in the district. Norinal had to come back and Repro just for the room and board, what with no prospects of a husband, no family to call her own, and no one who would hire her with her bad leg and her not finishing school. Many ex-Repros have to come back. It's a trap that no one can do anything about, because it benefits the District.

One person's exit pay isn't enough for a living, especially one person with no work experience besides lying in bed full of painkillers. Three, however, that's something, plus the money the Liskers have promised they will give me on my nineteenth birthday, plus the money from the jobs Lindo has promised us at the Plant after we turn nineteen. It is this why I am so indebted to the Liskers. It is because of them that I never had to have my belly sliced open, or spend long nights vomiting into a basin, or miss school because I was playing host to things human bodies were not meant to host.

I'd been thirteen when my mother died, so I was a Thin Girl when I got to the Home and I could still go to school with the rest of the kids. Matias always had sat next to me in school, Lorimer being right after Lisker, but it wasn't till that year that we started passing notes back and forth about the teacher, and other kids, and people in the district. He never once asked about my family, until he passed me a crumpled up yellow scrap two days before school let out for Midwinter.

"What're you doing for Festival?" Matias always wrote in a spiky, almost illegible scrawl. I had had to read it twice before I understood it.

"Nothing,"

"Why not?"

"Mother died in the disease wave last spring. I'm in the Community Home now," I wrote back. I watched him read it, and then folded up the little slip of paper and put it into his pocket. His young face was serious.

The next night, the director waddled down to get me out of the ward. "Your cousin's here to get you," she brayed, spit flicking from her mouth. Sorima was following behind her, a shadow in the gray garment of the Community Home. "Congratulations."

"We don't have cousins, I told her but she doesn't believe me," nine-year-old Sorima piped up.

"Of course we do. You were just too little last time we saw them to remember," I said, not believing it myself, not believing it until the Liskers were walking towards their apartment with me. Their neighbors, the childless Farrens, were just a few paces behind with Sorima. Matias and tiny Rivassa were smiling.

Chmiela pats my hand. "Just a few months and we'll all be done with this, and we can all decide when we get up in the morning and what to eat and -"

"After you three go back to school and get your certs," I interrupt. "Lindo's got us jobs locked down, but they're low-level, and you won't get past that without finishing school. The exit pay, the Liskers' money, and my salary will hold us until you three finish."

"Mamma Shan." Lyvriel rolls her eyes. "You know, you shouldn't go work at the Plant. You should work here as an Attendant for the Repros. You know how to act around us when we're raging, and you actually care about what happens to us. More than I can say for some of those women."

I would do it. I would do it if that didn't mean I had to deal with the director every day. However, there are limits to my patience, and the director of the Community Home crosses far over them. "Maybe," I say. "You know they won't let anyone get really hurt here. Repros are too valuable."

"Don't feel like any valuable right now," Lyvriel says, and shifts in her bed, attempting to find a more comfortable position.

I stay for an hour more until they're too tired to talk, and then go home, trying my best not to think about tomorrow. Quilla is doing her best to distract us. She roasts a chicken, and makes my favorite scalloped potatoes with real cheese, and there's sweet cake for dessert. I notice that one of her bracelets is gone, and I know she traded it for the ingredients, but I can't force myself to eat more than a few bites. In a way, I think it would have been better if we had a regular, plain meal, because it wouldn't have reminded us of the Reaping tomorrow.

That night, before I go to bed, I set my windup clock to ring at six thirty. I don't like waking up early, but I also don't like nightmares, and they don't happen when I wake up early.


	3. Chapter 3

I don't dream, but when I wake up to my ringing clock I know I've made a mistake. The reaping is at noon, and on weekends and holidays we sleep till nine. I've given myself two and a half extra hours to think about the reaping, about the two children who'll leave and not come back. Maybe they'll be children that I know. Maybe it'll be me. I try to read, and I turn the broadcasts on quietly, but all that they're talking about is Reapings and that's the last thing I want to watch.

I decide to go for a run instead. I pull out my school sports uniform from the closet, tie my hair back in a horsetail, lace up my shoes, and stretch a bit before I head out the door.

I've always been a good runner. Mother liked to get up early and run, and she didn't like to slow down for me but sometimes when I asked she'd take me along and we'd run around the lakes, over by the Plant, through the shop way. By the time I was ten, I could keep up with her. By the time I was twelve, she sometimes had to tell me to slow down, and I fully understood why she didn't like running slow. When I hit that perfect stride, nothing else matters. It's me, and the ground, and the wind on my face. I can't think about anything else. It's exactly what I need now.

"Good morning, Shan!" Neela, the baker, is opening up her shop on the edge of the square in anticipation of the crowds to come later that day. "Happy Hunger Games!"

"You too," I say, and run past her. The barricades are already erected, and I think I see a few bookies setting up their stations. It makes me nervous. I take the longer path, avoiding the square, and I don't see anyone as I run around the Plant and the reservoir behind it with its massive waterfall. I do three laps of my course before I decide I'm hungry and head home.

The Liskers are still asleep when I get back to the apartment. I find my towels, tiptoe down the hall to the communal shower, and wash myself with the cold water. There isn't any hot today; I thought there would be, what with the Reaping, but it seems it's all been used up already. I dry myself off, run a brush through my wet hair and put it up in two buns, the way it usually is. Presentable enough.

When I come in, Rivassa is sitting on her bed in her underwear and the little white bra she doesn't really need but wears anyway. "Happy Hunger Games, Rivassi-ke."

"Why does everyone say Happy Hunger Games?" There is too much bitterness for thirteen years in her voice. "The Hunger Games aren't happy. They're only happy when you win."

"And when you don't get picked," I add, searching for my special dress in my closet. I've had the same dress, a light brown one of Quilla's, since I got to the Liskers'. I've only worn it on reaping days and for weddings. "Here it is." Quilla's cleaned it, but I still remember the imperfections in the fabric where I clenched it in my hands when they called Matias's name last year. I shiver a bit.

"I'm scared," Rivassa says.

"Rivas, come here." She's put on her green reaping dress, a hand-me-down from the girl upstairs. "Listen to me. Your name is in that bowl twice. Twice out of about two thousand slips. I have nine slips in there. Seven because I'm eighteen and two extra because I had to take out tesserae for me and Sorima the year I was in the Home. If anyone here's getting picked it's me."

She looks down a bit. "You really miss him, don't you."

"We all miss him."

"But you miss him more," she says. She looks at me with those serious dark eyes, so brown as to be almost black: the same eyes as Matias. "Sometimes you say his name while you're asleep."

I sit down on the bed. "Yes, I miss him very much."

"Did you love him?"

If this were my real sister Sorima I would tell her to go away, shut up, that's not fourteen-year-old business, but Rivassa is different. She's smart. She understands feelings. No one can lie to her.

"You know, Rivassi-ke," I say. "Maybe I did."

She nods. "I know."

"Want me to brush your hair for you?" I ask. She scoots and sits down in front of me, and I brush out the fine brown locks one hundred strokes, the way my mother always did for me and I pretended to do to Sorima with my little brush though she didn't get hair till after Mother died.

Quilla knocks gently, not like her usual knock to get us up. "You ladies awake?" She opens the door a crack.

"Good morning, Mamma," Rivas says, smiling.

"Good morning. Shan, I have something to show you - would you follow me?"

I get up. "I'll finish your hair as soon as I get back, Rivas," I say, and follow Quilla to her room. Lindo must be in the shower because I don't see him anywhere. She rummages in her clothes-drawer.

"I thought, since it's your last Reaping, and that old thing of mine is a little small, you might want to wear this," she says, and pulls a white dress out of the drawer. I gape. There's silver embroidery on the short sleeves, and it's gathered just below the chest to make me look like I've got more than I have, which isn't much. The underskirt is overlaid with a layer of floaty white cloth, the kind that costs fifteen a yard at the tailor. I don't want to think about how much Lindo and Quilla have spent during the past few days.

"Quilla, you didn't have to do this - did Rivassa get one too - ?"

"Think of it as a goodbye present," she says firmly. "Next Hunger Games, you'll be in a house with your friends, and you'll have happier occasions to wear this dress than the Reaping."

I mentally note to pay her back in whatever way I can once this is all over and done with. I'm no seamstress, and my attempts at cooking usually end in explosions, but maybe I'll pick up my fiddle again and write them a tune. Maybe. I haven't played in years. The Capitol banned all music from before the Dark Days except for the stuff they heard in concert-halls. They still play it in the Capitol sometimes. They thought it wasn't "dangerous." My mother had been an expert fiddler, and I remember her stories about just how dangerous that music could be. But I'm nowhere near close to playing dangerous music. I'd have to start with the littles' learning books.

"Let me see how it looks," Quilla says, clapping her hands a bit, like a little girl. "Go on!"

I obediently take off the old brown dress and let this beautiful white dream slide over me. The sheer material floats a bit before it settles on my body. "Well?"

When I move, the overlay ripples behind me like a trail of cloud. I've never worn anything so beautiful.

Rivassa pokes her head in. "Shan, you look like you're about to get married!" she giggles.

"No getting married just yet," Lindo says. He's returned from the shower, wrapped in a towel. "A bit young for that, don't you think, Quilla?"

"Well, we were only twenty..." she clicks, pulling a loose thread out of the neck of my dress. "Here, Rivassa, let me pin your skirt. You want to wear your lucky silver star?"

"Everyone looks beautiful," he declares. "You girls mind giving me some privacy so I can make myself fit to escort these three lovely ladies to the Reaping?" Lindo usually isn't this exuberant on any day, let alone Reaping. It's an attempt to chase away the ghost that hangs in the corner and will not leave.

Rivassa is shaking a bit as we head for the square. Her grip on my hand tightens as the crowds grow thicker and the yells of the vendors and the bookies grow louder. We fight our way through the mass of people, all in their best clothes, towards the white-uniformed Peacekeeper with her clipboard of names.

"Shan Lorimer, eighteen," I tell her. She searches for my name in the Ls, makes a mark with her pencil, and inclines her head to indicate I should join the other eighteen-year-old girls in the enclosure nearest the stage on the right. I wait for "Rivassa Lisker, thirteen," to join me, to walk her to her enclosure. The Peacekeeper watches us go, a look of almost-pity in her eyes. She'll recognize the name Lisker, if not because she was stationed in District 5 last year, because Matias's death has been aired over and over again on recaps of the 54th Games, _Special Edition: Top 10 Horrific Tribute Deaths, Most Monstrous Tributes,_ and the like.

We reach the thirteen-year-old enclosure. Rivassa squeezes my hand tight. "May the odds be ever in your favor," she says, and walks in with her head held high.

I continue towards the stage to my own enclosure, greeting those I know from school. Morella is leaning on the barricade to keep herself upright, and her face is drained of blood. If her name isn't drawn, there'll be dancing early into the morning on Water Street where she lives. There's always an extra big celebration in the houses of eighteen-year-olds, being that they're out of danger. Morella's name is in there thirty times on account of all her younger siblings that she wouldn't let take out tesserae. Looking at her now, I wonder if she doesn't regret that decision just a little bit.

I hear hisses from the crowds as the Repros arrive. Repros have always been looked down on in District 5. Like if they had a choice they'd be Repros. I don't quite understand the reasoning of it, but that's the way it always is. Chmiela, Lyvriel, and Alegria are walking down towards the eighteens enclosure, hand in hand, Alegria still not quite steady on her feet.

"Happy Hunger Games," Lyvriel drawls. "Look at what Fart-face is wearing this year."

Our Capitol Escort's name is Arno Sartovace, but for obvious reasons everyone calls him Fart-face. Every year he shows up in a different outrageously colored outfit, and this year is no different. This year he wears a fluorescent orange suit with a green and orange striped tie, and shiny blue patent shoes. The ensemble clashes interestingly with his bright red pompadour. He preens up on the stage, dramatically fanning himself with a large black feathered fan though it's not more than sixty-five degrees out. Next to him sits Mayor Gill, and next to her the four living District 5 victors. Maelln is at the end. Her hair and irises are dyed white, her lips tinted the palest pink. The bright sun has shrunk her pupils enough so she looks blind.

When the clock on the Justice Building chimes twelve, the Reaping starts. Hovercams buzz around the square as Mayor Gill reads the story of the Rebellion, the Treaty of Treason, and the beginning of the Hunger Games. Her face is blank, like the walls of the Justice Building. Everyone here remembers how three years ago her daughter Reza was reaped and she had to watch as a girl from District 8 ran her through with a sword at the Cornucopia.

"A time for repentance and a time for thanks," Mayor Gill says wearily. "And now, let me introduce our District 5 victors. Marink Marnoma," she says, and an old man, swaying a bit on his feet from the grain liquor, stands up and weakly waves.

"Chari Farla," she reads. Chari's a woman old enough to be my mother. Her hair's in a long plait draped over her shoulder, and she's fiddling with the end. Her two sons are in the reaping ball, and there are rumors that the Capitol sometimes rigs it so the children of victors get picked. It raises viewings, so I'm told.

"Heliquo Lax." He's about thirty-five, but he looks younger than he looked last year. Maybe he's had surgery. I wouldn't be surprised. Like Maelln, he spends more time in the Capitol than he does in the Victor's Village here.

"And last of all, Maelln Daren." Maelln stands up and blinks her white eyes. I hear some disgusted reactions from the crowd. For a splitsecond I think she looks at me, but with her eyes it'd be hard to tell. It's not like she'd recognize me anyway.

"Heliquo and Maelln will be mentoring our tributes this year," the mayor says. "And escorting them will be our honored guest from the Capitol, Arno Sartovace." Sartovace waves, flashing the crowd his gleaming smile, and takes the microphone from the mayor. He gives the same speech every year too. His words blur.

"What're you thinking about?" Lyvriel taps me on the arm. "Boyfriend?"

"He wasn't..." I glare at her and she shuts up.

Everyone suspected. Everyone poked at me about Matias like they poke at any girl who spends a lot of time with one boy. We never went courting out in public like some do here. We never did the do either, though I thought in the showers about how it'd feel to unbutton all of him, push my fingers through every angle and hollow, wrap my legs around him and have him fill me. We kissed in shadows sometimes, and we slept in the same bed a few times in the winter when I said I was cold. We agreed it wouldn't have been good to see two people living under the same roof, practically brother and sister, lovebirding. Now if he were alive I'd lovebird him in public till his ears burned red like Fart-face's hair. But it's not good for me to think about these things.

I look at Lyvriel and decide I was too harsh. I know she'd give anything to be poked about some boy she was sweet on. Repros, obviously, aren't allowed to court. They're kept away from the boys. "Sorry," I whisper, and reach for her hand.

"And now, the announcement of our brave tributes!" booms Sartovace, as he does every year. "Let's start with the gentlemen, shall we?" He reaches into the first glass ball and withdraws a slip, which he unrolls so slowly it's almost painful to watch. On stage, Chari Farla's lips have disappeared into a thin line.

"Kalle Nuritin."

Chari collapses in relief. A sigh rises from the parents surrounding the square; it's not their child. Their boys are safe for another year. Kalle Nuritin. It's a name I've heard somewhere before.

A boy with his hair in a dark, curly horsetail emerges from the fourteen-year-olds enclosure. No one cries his name or screams in the crowd. An orphan, then. Sorima might have known him. He's in that awkward middle of puberty stage, the beginnings of a mustache looking out of place on his pale face. Kalle climbs the stage, trying not to let his terror show.

"Now, are there any volunteers?" Someone laughs and is quickly silenced. No one volunteers in District 5 unless a Repro's name gets drawn and a Thin Girl has to go.

"Then, the ladies." He crosses the stage to the girl's ball, reaching in. Morella looks like she's about to faint again. Chmiela and Alegria take my hands and squeeze, and I'm thinking _not me not me not Shan Lorimer not Shan Lorimer_ and

"Rivassa Lisker."


	4. Chapter 4

Last year, Quilla Lisker screamed when her child's name was drawn. The cameras find her and Lindo, expecting another show of hysterics. They get none. Quilla has no screams left.

The crowd parts to make way for Rivassa in her green dress. A hiss rises. Disapproval. The Peacekeepers ready their guns, though why I do not know. What would we do? Riot in the square? Refuse to let them take her? She's certainly not the first thirteen year old with a name pulled out of the reaping ball.

I look down the aisle. She's walking past the fifteens, the sixteens, the seventeens, her bottom lip caught in her teeth. The eighteens. She looks at me with those eyes. Matias's eyes but also her eyes: the eyes of Rivassa Lisker with her huge books and size 4 uniform and bra she doesn't need.

I step towards the stage and immediately Chmiela and Lyvriel pull me back.

"You can't go!" Chmiela whispers, her voice rising. "What'll happen to us?"

"Our plan!" Alegria adds. "Without you we're stuck!"

"Look at her," I gasp. "Tell me she'll survive five minutes in the Arena."

"Lisker, that's a familiar name," says Sartovace. "You wouldn't be related to Matias Lisker, would you?" It's an act. Everyone was watching last year. Everyone knows, not just District 5.

"Yes," Rivassa barely squeaks. "He was my brother."

"Competing siblings! Isn't that special. Your parents must be so proud," Sartovace says, and for good measure the camera finds Lindo and Quilla in the crowd, leaning on each other for support. "Well, Rivassa Lisker, do you think you can win?"

It's a joke. I picture the Capitol, District 1, District 2, and they're laughing at the spectacle of a tiny girl being asked if she can win. The Games have never had a victor under fifteen. I look to Chmiela, then Alegria, then Lyvriel. It's with difficulty that they let go of my arms.

"Go," says Chmiela, squeezing my hand one last time.

"Maybe," Rivassa says, her voice shaking.

"Now, if there aren't any volunteers, we can..."

"Stop!" The word fires like a bullet. My body is not my own. I duck under the rope and step into the aisle, striding toward the stage. Up the steps, holding my gown's skirt so I don't trip. Turn around. Face the crowd. "I volunteer."

"A volunteer! Isn't this unusual!" Sartovace says, grinning. "And what is your name, Miss?" He gives me the mic.

"Shan Lorimer," I say to him, to the square, to Panem.

"Shan." Sartovace doesn't ask me why I've volunteered. He already knows.

"Yes," I say, smiling a bit in spite of myself. "I'm Shan."

"Shan Lorimer and Kalle Nuritin," Sartovace announces, and follows up with his customary "Let's give a big round of applause to our District 5 tributes!" but he doesn't need to encourage the crowd because the applause has already started, a deafening roar of hands and mouths and our names. Chmiela, Lyvriel, and Alegria are screaming. Whether they shout in support or in grief, I do not know. The Liskers are already pushing through the crowd towards the Justice Building behind us, and then I see no more of the square because the Peacekeepers circle around us two tributes and start walking us into the building, to our separate farewelling rooms.

The Liskers burst through the door almost immediately after it closes. Rivassa throws her skinny arms around my waist and doesn't let go, not for a long while. Lindo and Quilla stand by the door, Quilla resting her head on his shoulder, never once looking away.

When Lindo finally speaks, his voice is strained. "You know this doesn't hurt us any less," he says. "I admit I was a bit wary when Matias showed up with that note, but you're as daughter to us as Rivassa-ke is."

"I owe you and yours my life," I say, trying to hold back the tears not just because I don't want to upset them further but because I know there'll be cameras at the station. "I've been in your debt since you pulled me and Sorima out of the Home."

"And the way we wanted you to repay it was by growing up healthy, finishing school, getting a good job, and letting us be Granda and Granma to your littles, if you decided you should have them," Quilla interjects. "Not...not like this."

We sit for a little while, until we hear a knocking at the door. "Lorimer, you have more waiting to see you," says the Peacekeeper. I wrap the three of them in my arms. Quilla is crying.

I put my hands on Lindo's shoulders. "There are three girls out there. Repros. You've met them. Their names are Chmiela, Lyvriel, and Alegria. I was friends with them in the Home, and we made a pact that we'd live together after we got out. You rescued me, but they're still in there and about to finish their Repro years. You know how little the Home pays when they cycle out. If I don't make it back, I want you to give them the money you were saving for my nineteenth birthday. I want you to promise me they'll never have to gestate another mutt again."

"Finish up, Lorimer." The Peacekeeper opens the door.

"I promise." Lindo sets his jaw and reaches for his wife and daughter's hands.

"Wait!" Rivassa turns and runs back to me. She reaches around her neck and unclasps her necklace - a silver five-pointed star set inside a triangle, hanging on a simple chain. "I want you to use this as your district token."

"Rivassa-ke, that's your lucky necklace."

"It was lucky for me today when you saved me," she says, her eyes shining. "Maybe it'll be lucky for you too."

And she runs out the door before she can start crying, her parents close behind her.

Sorima is next, with the Farrens. They hover in the corner and say nothing while Sorima sits somewhat awkwardly next to me on the gold couch. "Thank you for all you've done," Sorima says at last, and leaves.

The Farrens stay a little longer. "She's just not sure how to react," Lessa Farren says, clicking her tongue. "She was crying when you went up there, I saw her." I can't fight the rising guilt. I don't know my own sister.

"We'll save up," the Farren husband says. "We'll do our best to send you something in the arena." If I survive the bloodbath, I think. Instead I thank them and they leave.

Next, finally, Alegria and Lyvriel, their faces pink with the drugs and the crying, their fists full of white wildflowers. "Chmieli-ke fainted," Alegria gasps, her hands resting on her huge belly. "They had to bring the ambulance."

I know time is running short, so I quickly tell Alegria to get my money from the Liskers when she turns nineteen in two weeks and leaves the Home. Her money plus mine should be enough for the first rent in a decent little apartment. The rest will come with Lyvriel's exit in August and then Chmiela's a week later.

"And if I win, and I come back and find you three aren't in school..." I say, raising my eyebrows, trying to lighten the mood in the room.

"Oh, Mamma Shan," Lyvriel sighs. She buries her face in her elbow and lets out another string of teary hiccups. "How are you going to do this?"

"The same way everyone else does, I guess," I say, and try to laugh, but it comes out twisted and frightening.

Lyvriel looks at me. "Shani-ke, you don't kill."

The Peacekeeper bangs on the door. "One minute left."

"Quick! Put these in your hair," Alegria moves over to me (with surprising speed for her stage of Gestation) and efficiently weaves the stems into the bands holding my two buns in place. Lyvriel does not move from her place on the couch, but she holds out a braided crown of the same flowers, which Alegria grabs and places on top of my head. "Won't send our Shani-ke to the Capitol looking anything less than District 5's best."

"Stop it," I say, biting my lip. "I'll cry and everyone'll see."

Of course, then they set out weeping again and I don't know how to describe the feeling that comes when the Peacekeepers come in to get me. Relief that I'm away from their weeping and I can put on my blank mask as I'm walked to the car that'll take Kalle and me to the train. Pain, deep pain, at the thought that I'll probably never see these people, this building, these streets again. _Goodbye, little bushes,_ I think. _Goodbye, school. Goodbye, Community Home.  
_  
Kalle wears the same blank face as me. He fiddles with the bracelet of copper wire that's his district token. "You look like a bride," he whispers. "Like my aunt when she got married when I was a little." And he's right. I must look like a proper District 5 June bride now, with my white dress and silver star necklace and the summer flowers in my hair. This is the closest I'll ever get to a wedding of my own. But instead of a person, I'm going to marry the Arena, like so many others have done before me, and so many will after.

We reach the train station, and the Capitol camera crews take a while posing and adjusting us before they tell us to wave to the crowds and smile. Then they put Sartovace behind us, and the mentors on either side, waving and smiling. Kalle shivers a bit and the cameraman yells at him to stop fidgeting. They'll be able to edit it out before it airs. Maelln is next to me and she's smiling her biggest smile. She looks truly terrifying. Her white eyes and pale lips remind me of a blind snake.

"You ready?" she whispers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't own Panem, that's Suzanne's. Don't own Heliquo, he's V. Arrow's.

We're woken up at six forty-five by Sartovace's voice blaring through a speaker in our rooms. I quickly wash my face, brush my teeth, and pull a purple shirt and gray pants on before Maelln comes knocking on the door.

"Here, brought you this," she says, holding out a bun and a mug of tea. "Don't think you'll have time to eat when you're in the Remake Center."

"Thanks." I take a sip of the tea. It's good, very good. It must have something in it to wake me up because after a few sips I feel ready to run six miles.

Maelln notices my jittering legs and smiles. "Don't get too excited. They'll be making you over all day. I don't know who your stylist is this year, but usually District 5's parade costumes are harmless. They can't dress you up like cows, and that's what matters." She snorts.

"Disembark in 5." Sartovace's voice echos through the train.

"Best get ready." Maelln slips towards the door. "I won't see you during the day, but I'll be in the mentor's box during the parade. And for Panem's sake, don't try for the haughty look on the chariot. It'll just make you look like you really need to take a shit."

Kalle is waiting by the marked door when I get there, almost asleep on his feet. Sartovace hurries in and pinches him. "Look alive," he snaps. "And smile."

The door to the platform opens and we're blinded by hovercam flashes. "Hurry!" Sartovace strides out of the train. The crowd parts. "Follow me!"

"Shan! Kalle!" the reporters shout. "Look over here!" My vision is swimming from the lights, but I keep focused on the bright red pompadour clearing a path ten feet in front of me. Something touches my hand, and I realize it's a tiny bouquet of purple flowers, held by a little girl in a lacy dress and bright green wig.

"I want you to win!" she lisps, giving me a smile and showing off a few missing teeth.

I manage to squeeze out a thank-you and take the flowers before dashing off after Sartovace. A sleek black car is waiting for us at the end of the platform. We are quickly hustled in, the cameras snapping like insects after us as the doors close and the car glides out of the station and onto the street.

"Whoa," Kalle breathes. He tilts his head all the way back to stare at the shiny spires of the Capitol. "How do they stay up?" A woman wearing sky-blue lipstick is dancing across the giant screen covering the facade of one building. Her eye, magnified a thousand times, winks. I can tell it's supposed to be charming, but I flinch. Sartovace just chuckles condescendingly.

Once we reach the Remake Center, I don't even have time to speak before I'm whisked into a scalding hot bath by three shining, androgynous creatures. All three have dyed their skin in sparkling metallic shades - one bronze, one silver, one gold - and they throw sounds into their Capitol-accented speech that don't sound like words at all, but more like clicks and gurgles.

"Who are you?" I manage to splutter through the suds spilling down the sides of my face.

The bronze one licks its violet lips. "I'm Pemi."

"Keset," says the silver one, reaching for my hand with a gray, holey stone and scrubbing vigorously.

The gold one smiles and closes its eyes, its long, dark lashes touching its cheek. "Voski."

 _That didn't help,_ I think. They whisper and click their way through the bath, through my nails being trimmed and filed down to perfect ovals, and through an extremely painful procedure during which hot wax is pressed on my legs, underarms, and face with sheets of paper only to be ripped off as soon as it becomes comfortable.

"Doesn't she have perfect eyebrows, Kess?" Pemi whispers. "We don't need to do anything to those."

"She does!" says the silver person.

"Sorry," Voski says with another smile. "I know it hurts. Mother knew when I came out that I'd have to get it every week."

"You were so, so, so hairy!" Keset laughs.

"So you're related?" I manage to squeeze out.

"We're triplets!" Voski says. "We're the Darvulia Three."

"Not identical, of course," Pemi adds.

"You're lucky!" says Keset. "Lucky lucky lucky! Mother will make you look beautiful! No power plant uniforms from District 5 this year, no no no!" The silver person vigorously rubs a sweet-smelling oil into my newly hairless legs. Lucky is not me. Lucky would be back in District 5.

Voski seems to sense the new tension in my body, because the gold person crouches beside me. "Sorry about my sister," Voski whispers. "She gets a bit excited."

"So Keset's female," I say, and realize how silly that sounds, but Voski's dark hair shakes in affirmation, the glowing smile reappearing.

"Pem's my brother," says the gold person, and starts to stand up,

"I'm sorry," I whisper back. "But are you..."

"I'm Voski," Voski says, the face never changing.

"Is she ready?" A high voice trills through the door of the room. "Where's my tribute? Theodosia Darvulia is ready!"

"Mother!" All three triplets jump. Keset and Voski run to the double doors and pull them open. "Mother's here!"

The plump, tall woman who stands on the other side has skin of a normal color, but her hair - this woman has the most hair I have ever seen on a human being's head, and it's pinned and tucked in every possible way, with braids of all the colors of the rainbow, and many other colors as well. "Shan Lorimer from District 5! I had myself down for 8, but we all saw what you did at the Reaping, didn't we, children?"

"Oh, we did did did!" Keset bounces on her toes. "It was so lovely!"

"And Theodosia Darvulia ran down to the Remake Center to request District 5 instead, and it's a good thing she did, because they had Hadrian Hornbecker on District 5, and his tribute outfits are the most hideous every year! Once they gave him District 1 and what did he make them wear? Giant gemstone costumes! Round giant costumes! Not flattering at all!" Theodosia lets her braids drop. They should be touching the floor, but they stay aloft about three inches from the ground as if something has repelled them away. They float behind her as she circles around me. "But Theodosia Darvulia always gets what she wants, because Theodosia Darvulia is the best designer in the Capitol and everyone knows it! Voski! Get her dress!"

I'm shocked at the simplicity of the costume; its cut and puffy sleeves are similar to Quilla's dress, though this dress is a light gray with silver threads woven though here and there. Unusually for a tribute costume, there don't appear to be any huge hats or cut-outs anywhere. My confusion must register on my face, because Theodosia pats my shoulder in what is obviously supposed to be a comforting gesture but just ends up hurting. The woman is stronger than she looks.

"Of course, that's not all there is! Theodosia Darvulia would not send a tribute out just like this!" the woman sings out as her three children finish twisting my hair into a braided crown. "You'll have to go to the parade to see what's special! And throw your shoulders back when you get to the second corner on the route!"

The door flies open to reveal a plump, tall, man whom I can only assume is Theodosia's brother. Kalle slips in behind him, dressed in a simple shirt and pants, both made of the same material as my dress. His long ponytail has been cut off, and he keeps running his fingers through his newly shorn locks.

"Here we are!" booms the man. At first I'm surprised that he didn't knock - I could have been completely naked for all he knew - but I'm starting to figure out that nakedness is not something that is commonly cared about in the Capitol.

"Theophilus says it makes me look older," he says. "I miss it."

"This makes you look like a tribute instead of a little boy," snaps Theophilus. "And long hair in the Games is bad news."

"Don't do that on the chariot," Pemi advises. "It'll make you look nervous."

"I am nervous," Kalle replies.

"It doesn't matter a teeny bit whether you're nervous or not," says Pemi as he dabs a bit of pink on my cheeks. I like Pemi's voice: like water on stones. "It matters whether or not you look it, and right now you look it. This is the first time your sponsors are going to see you, and we can only make sure you're dressed for it. The rest is all yours to do."

"And we know you'll be wonderful wonderful wonderful!" follows Keset. "Come on, let's go downstairs!"

"And whatever you do, don't fall off the chariot," adds Voski. "They'll send you in with a broken arm if you have one."

The basement of the Remake Center is a huge stable, with twelve numbered chariots lined up in order. Some of the tributes and stylists have already come down, and they're doing last minute touch-ups and perfecting their poses.

"Look at District 1!" Keset titters. I swivel my neck to get a look. I can't tell if the tributes from District 1 are wearing flesh-colored, diamond-studded bodysuits or simply have the stones stuck to their skins and clustered more thickly between their legs.

"Don't stare, Keset," Theodosia quickly says, wagging her pink fingernails. "It's not polite."

As we move down the line, it becomes clear that jewels are this year's trend in tribute fashion. District 2's tributes stand stiffly in onyx-encrusted armor. I notice the looks on their faces, remember what Maelln told me about looking haughty in the parade, and almost laugh out loud before I catch myself. District 6 hasn't arrived yet, but 7's tributes, two chariots behind us, are dressed as trees with emerald leaves.

Theodosia pats my shoulder again. "Don't worry. Just remember what I told you," as if she thinks I'm worried about how I look instead worried about the fact that in less than two weeks, I will most likely be dead.

Two giant crystals waddle past us. I notice a scared face in the middle of one; District 12's girl. Coal miners. Diamonds, then. Theophilus snorts. "Hornbecker! Poor kids! Didn't even bother to redesign his District 1 costume from the 47th! Same costume, different colors!"

A hush sweeps through the stable as the elevator door opens and two wheeled chairs are pushed out, each with a District 4 tribute seated in it. The Darvulias begin to whisper to each other about a train crash, perhaps, but I quickly see the reason for the chairs; their sapphire-scaled merman and mermaid tails prohibit walking. I try to remember the girl's name, the one who volunteered for her sister. Tamora. Her pale hair, which was stringy and dirty at the Reaping, has been washed, cut and styled so she looks every inch the princess. Her prep team lifts her, with very little difficulty, into the shell throne on the District 4 chariot, and she swishes her tail as someone straightens her crown.

"Two minutes," someone calls, and Kalle and I mount up into our chariot. Our gray horses look impatient and tired, and I hope someone feeds them quickly afterwards. The stylists start moving back towards the elevator, and some of us shoot quizzical looks at our simple outfits. I hear the word "Darvulia" whispered a few times among the brightly colored people.

"We'll see you at the Training Center!" Theodosia says. "Hands out of your hair, Kalle. Shan, remember - the second corner!"

Everyone is in place now. District 6, behind us, could not be a more mismatched pair - a tiny curly-headed girl, and a huge eighteen-year-old boy who looks absolutely ridiculous in his bright train conductor's costume. He looks absolutely furious and ready to tear the whole ensemble off.

A trumpet fanfare sounds, and the doors open. District 1's chariot moves forward into the cheering crowd, and everyone else moves up a little. Kalle's hand almost moves up to his hair before he catches it and sticks it in his pocket. He smiles sheepishly.

As soon as District 1 is halfway down the short block, District 2 is out to another healthy noise from the Capitol crowd.. The city lights dance across their shiny black armor as they pull away from the stable. District 3 is out to lukewarm applause, and District 4 is met with a huge yell of approval. Tamora and the District 4 boy, Andrew, face opposite sides, and I can see the two bright tails swishing and Tamora's pale arm waving to the crowd. A bouquet of flowers lands in her throne, tossed from a balcony. I can barely see her grinning face, but I know it's there.

As Kalle and I move out, the crowd quiets, murmuring to each other. I can tell they're just as confused as the stylists were. The audience isn't cheering; most of them aren't even smiling, and I begin to worry if Theodosia and her Darvulias weren't wrong. I don't care about the costumes, but if I'm going to try in these games, I should get some sponsors, shouldn't I? My hands almost go to twist my hair before I remember myself and where I am - on a chariot in the Hunger Games parade with all of Panem watching.

District 6 and 7 are out now. The little girl from 6 is skipping around her chariot and waving to the crowd. Her tall District partner stands stiffly, looking as miserable as ever. We round the first corner and lose sight of them for a brief minute before District 6 reappears. The girl waves at me, her red ringlets bouncing under her conductor's hat, and I can't help but wave back.

A smooth female voice comes over the loudspeakers. "From District 5, _Kalle Nuritin and Shan Lorimer!_ "

The second corner! I turn around to face the long straightaway ahead of the chariot, and in doing so throw back my shoulders. Something in the back of the dress softly clicks, and I have to shut my eyes for all the noise and all the light. The crowd is roaring, and I am blinded as I open my eyes, because blue electric lights shoot and buzz through the silver threads in Kalle's suit, the silver threads in my dress, even the chariot carriage and the horses' bridles. The Darvulias have made us into human power plants.

The electricity crackles up and down my dress, but somehow I don't feel a thing. I wonder what strange tech makes all of this work, because I've never seen anything like it in all my school tours of the Plant. Kalle waves, and little cracks of blue leap out of the thread and off his sleeve.

"District 5!" The crowd shouts and claps for a while after our chariot passes. Some of the children in the front row jump up and down and try to catch the blue sparks. In the mentor's box at the entrance of the City Circle, I see Maelln and Heliquo stand up and cheer, their arms in the air.

Once our chariot rolls to a stop, we stand and wait for the rest of the tributes to arrive. We've been told that there's no room to relax in the City Circle; the cameras could cut to us at any moment.

Once District 12 arrives, a choir of Capitol teenagers sing the national anthem from the president's balcony. The Darvulias must have programmed our costumes or maybe Theodosia has a remote control hidden in her trailing sleeve, because our blue lights go dimmer and don't spark during the anthem, but as soon as the president comes out on his balcony, we're back at full brightness. We stay that way through the president's speech, the victory lap around the circle, and all the way into the Training Center.

Pemi leaps up onto the chariot and disconnects the circuit, and before I can blink the bronze man has me in his arms and I'm spun around and around like I'm a little again.

"They loved it!" Keset screams. She has Kalle in a tight embrace. Her silver lipstick is already all over his face, but she loudly kisses him on the forehead. "Mother, you've done it again!"

"You expected any less from me?" Theodosia booms. "Put the boy down and let's go upstairs. I'm sure they're exhausted by now."

District 12's chariot rolls into the garage and the doors slide shut: closed on the cheering crowds, on the silver skyscrapers, and on the last free air twenty-three of the people in this room will ever breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews make my shriveled-up author's heart fill with joy and motivation to write more.


	6. Chapter 6

Don't own Panem, don't own the Hunger Games. Those belong to Suzanne. Don't own Heliquo or Repros. They appear by the grace of aimmyarrowshigh. The rest is mine.

_____________________________________

"They're crazy!" Keset shouts at the giant screen on the wall, her mouth full of crab, or so I've been told the District 4 delicacy that the silver girl is shoveling in her mouth is called. "Crazy crazy crazy!"

"Calm down, Keset," Theodosia Darvulia murmurs, but her mouth is pursed tight. "I took a risk, and it didn't turn out exactly as we hoped, but they're not last."

The recaps of the parade have been airing for the past two hours. Kalle and I have been showered until we didn't think we could possibly be any cleaner and fed until our stomachs feel like they're about to burst. In the polls, District 5's costumes are holding steady at fourth -- behind 4, 1, and the fabric float the tributes were sewn into of District 8.

"Don't worry." Voski pats my hand. "If you'd had Hornbecker you would have been last for sure." Indeed, District 12, as usual, is the least popular, and the brightly colored people on the programs are universally mocking the waddling District 12 tributes. I remember the terrified face of the girl from 12 and say nothing.

"It's getting late and these two have a big day tomorrow." Maelln strides into the living room where the rest of us are sitting. "Theodosia, Theophilus -- Pemi, Keset, Voski -- it's been a pleasure, as always."

Theodosia rises, the ends of her braids languorously floating through the air behind her. "Come, children. Let's give them their beauty rest." After Theodosia loudly kisses Maelln on the cheek and Kalle and I are engulfed in a long embrace by the triplets, the Darvulias are out the door.

"Congratulations, you survived the easy part," says Maelln briskly. "Now comes the hard part. You'll be up early tomorrow for training. That'll be three days, and at the end of Day 3, you get to impress the Gamemakers with whatever you got. Kalle -- slingshot, and maybe try your hand with a bow. Shan -- staff. Also, don't pass up the edible plants and trapping station. Learn how to spear a fish. And don't stick together. You don't want anyone to know that you're actually, you know, not planning on killing each other the second you get into the Games." 

Heliquo sits passively in the corner, occasionally taking a sip of his bright green drink and nodding occasionally.

"They'll put you all together for lunch. Don't sit together. Find a nice corner on your own, and if anyone comes up to you give them the silent act. Plenty of time to talk after training is done. Now let's get you both in bed. Panem knows you won't be sleeping much during the games, and going in without sleep is a death wish for sure. You can't sleep, just press the button and take a pill."

My bed is bigger than three of mine at home put together and unbelievably soft. When I lie down, I feel like I'm floating. Or drowning. I cover myself with the blankets and try lying in every position possible, waiting for the tide to come carry me away, but I remain dry on the shore.

I call up the requisition screen from the table by my bed, but I don't request a pill. Instead, I request a highlights tape of the 44th Hunger Games. 

A large screen rises out of the floor at the foot of my bed, and twenty-four children stand on their starting plates around the golden Cornucopia. The Arena is a rocky, cold island. Waves lash against the rocks, and the howl of the wind is almost louder than Claudius Templesmith's voice.

The girl standing on the District 5 plate no more resembles the woman asleep in the next room than she does me. Rather than being white, her hair is dark brown, her eyes a bright blue. When the gong sounds, she flees the scene rather than fight it out at the sparse Cornucopia. She is the first one to find the rowboats that the tributes can use to row to the smaller islands littered around the bigger, main island, each of which has a box of food and supplies on it.

I fast forward through the forging of the Trained Tribute alliance, the other tributes hiding in the island's vast network of caves, and the attack of vicious, horned goat-like mutts with a taste for human flesh. Maelln rows from island to island and takes most of the the supplies for her own. She lights fires on the other islands at night and sets traps with dry wood and grass to trigger bigger blazes if someone trips on a wire or tries to open the supply boxes. She burns three islands and five Tributes this way, until the Gamemakers start blowing up the islands. Then, with six Tributes left and four of them locked in such a heated battle that they wouldn't notice her if she walked right through them, she returns to the main island, scales a scramble of boulders, and sits, stone still, at the top of the island's radio antenna, illuminated by the blinking red light, while the remaining tributes fight through the night to the death below. Scene after scene after scene of children tearing at each other and then Maelln's serene face, then a body lying dark in its own blood and Maelln's silhouette shadowed against the red light.

When it comes down to the final two Tributes, herself and a boy from District 10 already limping from a sprained ankle, Maelln descends from her perch, calmly picks up a long, thin sword, and lets the starving, gibbering boy run himself through on it as he rushes at her. The camera, rather than focus on the boy's blood, focuses on his eyes, locked onto hers, as the light disappears and he sags to the ground.

She does not gag, or pull the sword out, or even blink as the clouds break and the sun shrinks her pupils. She does not move an inch until Claudius Templesmith announces Maelln Daren, of District 5, as the winner.

"Did you get some sleep?" Maelln asks from her seat by the window, as I emerge from my room in the morning, the plate in her lap already piled high with eggs and bread. "Have some breakfast."

The long table at one end of the living room is spread with more than twenty dishes filled with food, with a stiffly standing man -- an Avox? -- at each end. I wonder if the Capitol is trying to make us want to win by promising us that we'll never be hungry again if we do. I've been hungry before -- not starving, but not getting enough -- but I can't summon up a crumb of appetite. I take a single slice of green melon and sit down in the chair next to her.

"You have to eat, Shan," she says. "I know you don't want to, but if you're malnourished going in, you don't have a chance."

"What's the point if I'm not going to - "

_"Shhh!"_

"I mean, I'm not - "

" _Shhh!_ Talking like that is more dangerous than you think. You go in thinking you're dead, you're dead already." Her black pupils, dark islands in a sea of white, nervously shift around. "Now eat and get dressed. They'll have put training outfits for you in your dresser."

I summon up a memory of the Home, lying in bed with a growling stomach. This works. I manage to get down a plate of eggs, meat, and bread. Kalle eats three plates of the same.

When we call the elevator, the door opens to reveal the sandy-haired tributes from District 9 standing there and looking at the floor. The boy looks healthy enough, but the girl is extremely thin. District 9. Grain. From the way she looks, they don't get to eat much of what they make. They do not look at us, not even when we reach the basement that serves as the training center for tributes.

As I exit the elevator, another Avox pins a piece of cloth with the number 5 stenciled on it to the back of my shirt, and gestures to the middle of the large room into which I have emerged. Almost all of the tributes are already there, sitting on the floor silently, awkwardly. N. The tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 are sitting the closest together. _S. Villulia/1/F//16/5' 6"/122, L. Silverstreet/1/M/18/6' /210, C. Jasper/2/F/17/5' 1"/108, V. Lenox/2/M/15/5' 5"/120._ I read silently on the tribute data screen. _A. Irenes. T. Naiad. Hit them in the right place and they --_

I sit down close enough so as not to look separate from the pack, but not too close so that someone will start talking to me. From the look of this group, no one would no matter how close I sat. We're not sure what to do or say, if anything. _Like children on the first day at a new school,_ I think, and the notion makes bile rise to the back of my throat.

The head trainer calls us to attention and orients us as to the location of the training stations, and reminds us that we're not allowed to spar with each other. As soon as she dismisses us, the girl from 2 - _Calpurnia,_ I remember - immediately takes off towards the pole-arms, which includes staff. Damn! I don't want to have to interact with her if I can help it, so I head for the traps station, remembering Maelln's orders. I suspect she receives reports on what and how we do in training, and even though I have no chance of surviving the Games, I don't want the closest thing to a friend in the Capitol I have to send me off disappointed in me.

I head for the snares and traps station and, remembering Maelln, ask the instructor for some simple booby-traps. He nods robotically and opens a nearby supply cabinet to gather materials. As he rustles around in the cabinet, another tribute steps up to the station. He's tall, probably the tallest tribute save for the huge boy from District 6, but so thin that he looks like he'd fall to the ground if the wind blew slightly too hard, and his black hair is neatly cut at his chin. He looks vaguely familiar, and I briefly struggle to place him, but then I remember where I last saw his face -- in a tree costume in the parade. District 7, then. 

The boy from District 7 follows behind me, never speaking, as I learn how to clean fish and rabbits, and he stations himself at the screen next to mine for the edible plants lesson. Some of them I recognize immediately -- wild onions, and dandelions, but I know the Arena could be anywhere in Panem. There might be no onions there. Or there could be no plant life whatsoever.

I start on a safe-or-not-safe quiz. Water hemlock: poisonous. Wild blackberries. Safe. The little clovers with heart-shaped leaves: safe. _Which is safe to eat?_ asks the screen, as it shows me one basket of bright orange fruits with wrinkly skin and one of bright red berries. I've never seen either of them before.

The boy from 7 quickly moves his hand towards my terminal and points at the orange fruit. It's too quick to be an accident. I look over at him. A pair of dark brown eyes meet mine.

I tap the orange fruit.

_Oranges are native to District 4 and some parts of 11, and are completely safe for human consumption,_ the screen displays. _Nightlock is native to District 12, some parts of District 10, and District 7, and is highly toxic to humans. Ingestion of one berry by a 180-pound adult causes seizures, vomiting, and death within minutes._

The boy from 7 has looked back down at his screen. 

A loud bell rings, announcing lunch. We all file obediently through a door at the opposite end of the room from the elevator into a smaller room. Avoxes are rolling carts full of food through another door at the end of the smaller room. I avoid the other tributes, taking a sandwich from one cart and a few slices of a fish with pink flesh from another. Kalle, I see, is across the room collecting a seed-speckled loaf. Looking around, I see there are eight round tables, six seats to each table. Twelve districts to sit at them. What kind of game are they playing with us?

I sit at the table farthest from the big cluster of carts and take a bite. Like it or not, the busy day has made me hungry. 

A shadow blocks out the bright light above my head, and I look up. The boy from 7.

"Can I -" he begins. I nod silently and motion to the chair across the table. He sits tentatively one seat away from me on my right. I turn my eyes down to my food.

"We have that at home, you know," he says, pointing to the bright pink hunk of fish. "In 7. It's a salmon. They're born in rivers, then they swim to the ocean where they grow to adults, and then they come back up the river in the spring and fall to lay their eggs, and after they've laid their eggs, they die. On the way back, they'll jump up over waterfalls to get there. That's when we catch them. Caught them. Before the Peacekeepers covered the river."

I nod in what I hope is a brusque way, but if it is, he doesn't take the hint.

"I'm Cedar," he says. "Like the tree."

"Of course," slips out of my mouth, minus _a boy from District 7 would be named after a tree._

"Not actually," he says. "There was a victor from District 11. Her name is Seeder, but like a person who seeds. S-E-E-D-E-R. We have the same stylist as she had and he wouldn't stop talking about how confusing it would be if I won."

"I've never met any other Cedars. No matter how you spell it," I say.

"There are four at school at home," he says. "I guess it's a 7 thing."

"Are there a lot of people named after trees in 7?"

"Yes. My entire family is." He smiles and looks down. "There's my sister Linden, she's married and has a baby. Then there's Spruce, he's twenty, and Rowan is nineteen. Then there's Ash, he's 18. Then me. Then Hazel, she's fourteen, and Maple…" His smile fades. "Maple's the youngest. She's here with me."

"Which one of -- " I point outwards, at the other tables "is she?"

"Upstairs. She's not feeling well. I think she ate something last night because she was throwing up this morning." 

Kalle, sitting three tables away, catches my eye. _What are you doing?_ he mouths. I take another bite of my sandwich and say no more to anyone.

The Trained Tributes are sitting at the table immediately to my left and are the only ones talking loud enough to hear. More accurately, Andrew and Luxor are talking. I see Satin, the girl from District 1, try to raise her voice and immediately get cut off.

After lunch ends, I quickly walk to the pole-arms station and pick up a wooden staff, about six feet long and banded with metal on the ends. I let one end fall; it hits my hand with a surprisingly solid smack, but I doubt this would be able to kill anyone. Is that how I think now?

I survey the room. _K. Nuritin/5/M/14/5' 5"/105_ is smashing bottles with a slingshot, and _C. Skogen/7/M/16/6' 1"/135_ is cutting into dummies with an axe. From the instructor I learn a few blocks and parries, and one sweeping move that I can use to blind my opponents should I find myself in a sandy or dusty environment. I smash the ends of the staff into the training holograms until the boy from District 4 - _Andrew, his name is Andrew_ \- comes over.

"Spear," he says to the attendant, who immediately hands him one. He plants the dull end on the ground, and I feel his gaze on me, sizing me up. "Nice block. Ever held a real weapon, Five?"

I put the staff back into the storage bin and walk away. An automatic door in the wall, one I hadn't noticed before, opens as I pass under its motion sensor. I peer through. This room houses a three-lane track around which a small girl is running, her red ringlets tied back. The few that have escaped are stuck to her forehead with sweat, but she shows no signs of slowing down. As she passes me, the purple 6 stuck to her back flashes. 

A similar tribute screen to the one in the first room glows on the wall. _D. Mullins,_ 6/F/12/4' 9"/ 66. D. Mullins tirelessly runs around the track. Had she been at lunch? I would remember those red curls, or would I?

I wait for D. Mullins to reach the opposite side from where I am and launch myself onto the track, trying to summon a memory of the breeze coming from the mountains, or the scent of the rocks by the reservoir, but the air here is aseptic and recycled so as to be unmistakably Capitol. The ground here is too even. I close my eyes and run, and run.

I don't know how long goes by before start to get tired. One hour, maybe? An hour and a half? I picture Satin or Valerian chasing me, my wheezing lungs shouting my defeat in the Arena. I force myself to keep going, keep that steady pace. _Six more laps,_ I decide. _One more mile._

D. Mullins, on the outside track, passes me, her legs flying. How many times has she already passed me? She's soaked with sweat, but she passes me twice more during my final mile, and does not budge from her track as I stretch. I've been the fastest runner in school for years now, but I never could run anything like this. D. Mullins is covering a mile in less than six minutes, and this is after running for who knows how long today.

"Dessa." The boy from 6 is almost too tall to fit into the door. "Training's over. Time to go." His face is not hostile. Almost sympathetic, in fact.

Dessa is coming around the near side of the track, and she slows to a halt. "But I don't want to go, Ishan," she says, barely out of breath.

"We have to," he says. "Come on."

The main room is nearly empty, with a pack of tributes waiting for the elevator. I don't see Kalle. He's probably already gone up. When the elevator does come, I'm crammed in with both tributes from 3 and 8, and the boy from 10. Like this morning, none of us look at each other or talk. 

Would Matias have been like this? A staunch, silent tribute, standing in the elevator, not looking into another pair of human eyes for days? Or would he have been like Cedar, trying to find something in common with his fellow tributes? Fellow victims? When he stood on his plate, was he thinking that he was going to win? How he was going to win? How could he have won? Matias standing where Maelln stood, holding a sword, looking into the fading eyes of another tribute. No. It never would have happened like that. It won't. Can't happen like that. Not with me.

"Your floor, Five," someone says in back of me, probably the boy from Eight. I nod in what I hope is thanks and stumble into the living room.

Maelln and Heliquo are nowhere to be seen, but Kalle is on the couch and turns around to face me as soon as he hears me come in. "What happened today with that boy from 7? You know what Maelln said! Don't talk to the other tributes!"

"He talked to me first," I throw up my hands in defense. "There weren't enough tables for each district to get their own."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kalle asks. "You talked to him."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, the same thing you do whenever someone you don't like talks to you."

"He didn't give me a reason to dislike…"

"How about this one? Four days from now he'll be trying to kill you! Just like everyone down there who isn't me." 

"It's just…"

Humans are not islands, and this was not how we were meant to live. Or die.

"Only one of us is going to come out of that Arena, and the more people you care about, the harder it's going to be." Kalle wavers in front of me. "We're already weaker in some ways, going in promising not to kill each other. I know the Trained Tributes group up, but they don't care about each other. Any of them would kill all the others if it meant they got to go home. They probably will end up like that, just like the last few Games."

Cedar's sunken face, his unevenly blinking eyes, when he talked about Maple. The boy from 6 standing in the door calling his District Partner back. The two tributes from District 12 walking to the Justice Building, hand in skeletal hand.

"Shan, what do you think would happen if we were the final tributes left?" Kalle is chewing on the inside of his mouth, gazing out the window. "We'd have to…"

"Let's not think about it now." The chances of us being the final two are so slim that I don't want to consider the possibilities of that ending.

"No, really. Have an allied pair ever been final two? Or District Partners?"

"I'll call the screen up," I say, and I do by pressing a few buttons on a tablet, like Maelln showed me, and sit myself down on the couch next to Kalle.

"State your inquiry," a smooth computerized voice orders me.

"Have a pair of District Partners ever been final two in the Hunger Games?"

" _Final two District Partners: The 21st Annual Hunger Games's Final Two were Imandra Holcombe and Phoebus Pittsford, of District 2. The winner was Phoebus Pittsford. The 40th Annual Hunger Games's Final Two were Leander Sardis and Regan Martin, both of District 2. The winner was Regan Martin._ " 

"They're from 2," Kalle smiles. "No way they were friends or -- a few years ago there was an alliance and everyone, even the Capitol, was sad when they all were killed, because they wanted them to live! Do you think if -- maybe if we both made it to the final two, they'd let us both go home? If we were actually friends, they wouldn't want us to kill each other, would they? Think about it! I'm from the Home, and you survived the Home but made it out. It's a good story, and the Capitol likes good stories. Not just not killing each other -- I want to go home, and so do you, so let's help each other get home!" His olive-colored eyes cloud with happiness.

"And what if they don't? What if they make us kill each other?"

He blinks. "Then you'll win, because you can run faster than me, and you're stronger than me."

"Do you think you could kill any of them downstairs? You, yourself, Kalle?" The boy on the couch in front of me, not yet a man, shot bottles in the Home. He loves a girl named Yula who's fourteen and a Repro. He's probably never killed anything larger than a fly. 

"Of course," he says. "I've got my slingshot, and I learned today where, if I stab someone with a knife, they'll die quick. You should learn something short range too. Stun them with a blow from the staff, then kill them with a knife or a short sword or something like that. Don't you think you could kill any of them?"

I am holding Maelln's sword and the other end runs through Calpurnia. Through Andrew. Through Dessa. Through the boy from 11. The girl from 12. Blood on the floor and blood on my hands. _No._

"Yes."

"We can go home. If we can make them like us, they won't want us to kill each other!"

The elevator door smoothly slides open and in comes Heliquo, a glass of something bright blue in hand. "Hello, Kalle," he says. "Shan. Good first day of training?"

"Fine," I say, and Kalle nods. I feel his weight on the couch shift as he tenses up.

"Good, good. Remember to get enough sleep," he says, and smiles as much as his no-wrinkles shots allow. "I know it might be hard to sleep thinking about the Games, but going into the arena sleep deprived is a recipe for dying early. In fact, dinner won't be ready for a while, so why don't you take a little cat nap? I'll see you both at dinner," he says, and disappears into his room.

Kalle looks at me, suddenly solemn. "Did Maelln sleep in your room last night?"

"No. Why?"

"Heliquo slept in a chair in the corner. Not really. He was awake. He said he wanted to make sure I was okay, but I…I don't know. He was watching. All he did all night was watch." He breathes deep. "I'm not tired, are you?"

"No."

I continue to not be tired through the sumptuous dinner -- tonight turkey with smashed potatoes, green beans, salad, and pie for dessert -- and the tea Maelln gives us afterwards. Kalle does not mention my speaking to Cedar, and if Maelln knows already, she doesn't bring it up. At nine o'clock, we are sent to bed, and I order a pill to help me sleep. I may not trust Heliquo, but he has a point about going into the Arena already tired.

In the dream, I'm running, running on Maelln's island, running onto her sword. The blood spills onto my feet and I don't feel a thing. Maelln's eyes are white with pinholes of black at the center, and her pale lips are stained with blood, her hair dyed red from a gash on her forehead, her teeth running through with red, and she is laughing, red spraying onto my face. The ground shakes under me and --

"Shan?" I am back in my bed in the Capitol, and Kalle is shaking me awake. "Shan? Heliquo…"

"What did he do?!" So the rumors about him were true, then.

"He was just sitting there, on my bed. I took that pill that made me sleep, and he said he just wanted to be there in case I had a nightmare, because he couldn't sleep before he -- I just want him to leave me alone. Stop watching me."

"Where is he now?"

"He's asleep, sitting on the bed. Shan, can I --"

My bed is big enough for four of me. I roll over to the left side and put a pillow in the middle of the bed to separate us, though I doubt Kalle tosses that much being a Home kid.

He exhales. "Thank you." I barely feel the covers shift as he climbs in and turns his back away from me. He's asleep in seconds. For me, sleep does not come as easily, and when it does, I am holding Maelln's sword again as the red light of the antenna blinks above. The weapon jumps and shivers in my hand, and pulls me across the grassy field towards Cedar, standing on the shore, and I cannot stop it before it tears through his back and comes out the front, slick with red. 

Cedar does not collapse. "Why?" he asks, his dark eyes steady. I blink and Rivassa is on the end of the sword, her feet dangling above the ground, her white school shirt turned red. "Why?" she asks. Blink. Matias, naked as I ever saw him, the blade through the little hollow in his chest and red bubbling up around the silver edges. "Why?" he asks, unblinking, unmoving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews! They make me write faster! They also make me write better.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Panem. That's Suzanne's. I don't own Heliquo or the notion of Repros. They belong to V. Arrow and appear with her permission. Everyone else is mine.

When we come out of our side of the apartment in the morning, Heliquo is already sitting at the breakfast table, red melon juice dribbling down his swollen chin and falling onto the table. "Good morning, Shan," he says. "Good morning, Kalle. Did you sleep well?"

When training starts for the second day, we're not called to meet again. Kalle and I are the first ones in the huge, gray room. I immediately pick up a staff, and Kalle shoots rocks at the human dummies' blank heads, diving at them with a knife before the rock has a chance to fall to the ground.

The other tributes intermittently emerge from the elevator. Dessa, when she comes out, disappears immediately onto the track. The Trained Tributes slouch by the elevator until everyone from 1, 2, and 4 has come out, and they together monopolize the throwing knife station. The two stations on either side of them are deserted. I'm practicing a sweeping move, to trip someone who might be trying to get too close, when appears someone who might as well be a shrunken copy of Cedar, standing and watching barely ten feet away from me. I know immediately who I'm looking at.

 _M. Skogen / 7/F/13/5'6"/84. S_ he's almost as tall as me, but she's so starved I can almost see her ribs through her training shirt. The green of the cloth is almost matched by the greenish bruise around her right eye, which someone has tried to disguise with makeup. Her hair is cut in the same chin-length way as Cedar's is. I picture a line of dark-haired, terrified Skogens, standing in front of a rusty old sink on Reaping Day while their mother works on each in turn with the scissors. Stop crying, Maple, or I'll slip, she says, more nervous than her children.

Maple stands there, her face somber, her red nose still watering a bit.

When Cedar emerges from the elevator, he immediately goes to Maple's side and places one hand on her shoulder. "Is that her?" I hear her lisp.

"Yes, that's her."

From the staff station to fire making, to the track, to climbing ropes, I have two gaunt shadows five steps behind me all morning, sometimes joining in with whatever I'm doing. Maple wheezes when she runs, barely able to make it twice around the track before she has to stop. She's fast at tying knots and setting snares; she has three completed foot traps set in front of her while I'm still working on my second, and she has her small pile of twigs and dry grass in flame before I do, but how is this knowledge going to do her any good if she can't even run away?

When the lunch bell rings, she's thoroughly out of breath but all the same breaks into a near-run towards the side room, as if she's afraid that all the food will be taken away if she's not the first one there. Cedar stands at the base of the rope she had been valiantly attempting to climb, his eyes lingering on the door even after his sister has disappeared into the carts.

"Come with me." I say.

"What - "

"Now."

I pull him through the nearest ajar door into a storage closet.

"You need to stop following me. The both of you."

"I'm - "

"This isn't a game. What are you trying to do?"

He sighs. "She asked me yesterday to follow you, because she couldn't come down."

"And because she asked you to follow me, you -- "

"She saw what you did! Back in 5, with that girl."

"Then why me?" I ask, the air through my teeth making an audible hiss. "Why not Tamora?"

"Tamora?"

"District 4. She went because her sister was called too, and Rivassa's not even my -- "

"Have you looked her in the eye since she got here? That girl from 4? There's something wrong with that girl. Whatever it is, Maple picked you," he says, "and you saw her try to run. She can't. She gets sick and can't breathe."

I take a deep breath, steeling my face. "Are you suggesting that - "

"No!" His shoulders shake. "The only thing I'm trying to do…the only thing I'm trying to do is make it easier." He swallows his top lip, his voice breaking. "So my sister doesn't die before she's actually dead," and his words are almost lost. "I sometimes think, I thought on the train -- if I can just keep her alive, if I can protect her, than maybe -- I can handle an axe -- but I can't kill a person, it goes against everything my family ever taught me, the only thing I've ever put an axe to and thought I ever would have to is a tree!"

In that moment, his pointy face and dark eyes look so familiar that it's all I can do to keep from crying myself.

"I'm not asking you to carry her, or protect her in any way," he says. "All I want from anything -- I don't want to see her die thinking the way she is now. Remember I told you that Maple wasn't feeling well, she was throwing up? It wasn't that. Our mentor is a drunk. She was crying after the parade because she was scared, and I was trying to calm her down and he hit her. He punched her in the eye. He's a grown man, and he punched a thirteen-year-old girl in the eye," and that pit that grew inside me on the train burrows a little deeper, eating away at the strings that make Shan.

"If it's just for today and tomorrow, if you can just -- not even talk to her, just not treat her like a cockroach you're about to crush -- maybe she won't die thinking there aren't any kind people left. I…I thought maybe you'd understand."

I am holding Maelln's sword with the end run through my own heart. "Yes," comes out of me, Kalle and all that forgotten. "I can do that."

Cedar smiles. "I knew she was right about you," he says, and pokes his head out the door of the closet. "No one there." He leaves.

When I come out and into the dining room, I fill my plate and find myself a seat at a table with the sandy-haired boy from 9 and the lean, dark-skinned girl from 11. We eat in silence, not looking at each other.

I hear a chair scrape from the noisiest corner of the room, and the girl from District 4, Tamora, gets up. Her eyes are vacant and gray, like old dishwater, a different person's transplanted onto the blazing young woman who leapt onto the stage to volunteer on Reaping Day. She takes a fish-shaped loaf from the bread table and nibbles on it slowly once she sits back down at the table, where Luxor and Andrew are talking and banging their fists on the table. I wonder which of them will come out the leader of the obligatory Trained Tribute alliance.

I head for the camouflage station after lunch is done. Five minutes after the instructor is done explaining three different ways to disguise a bright color with various muds and plants, Maple is sitting at the seat next to me, swirling mud onto her arm.

She looks up at me and takes a deep breath, like she is going to speak, three times before she actually does. "You were brave," she says. "You saved your sister."

"She wasn't actually my sister," I reply quietly. "But she almost was. I have a sister whose name is Sorima, but another family adopted her."

"You're an orphan?" Maple asks. Her face is relaxing the tiniest bit.

"Yes," I say, and though I know the answer, "Are you?"

"No, I have a huge family." She smiles. "There's my mother, and my father. There's Linden and her husband Sam, and they have a little baby. Then there was Holly," she says, and her eyes grow distant. Cedar didn't mention a Holly. "Then Spruce, Rowan, and Ash. Then Cedar, then Hazel, then me. My mother works at the paper mill and my father makes fiddles for the Capitol, and he's training Rowan to make them too. He was training Holly, but…but she got reaped five years ago." She and looks down. "Spruce can play the fiddle, but he can't make them. He says his hands are too clumsy. The rest of us work in the forest after school. I'm a planter. " Work. Not worked.

"Can you play the fiddle?"

"No, I play the guitar. I haven't played a lot this year, because we've had to hide the instruments. But my father plays, and so does my mother, and Spruce plays, and Rowan too, and Cedar plays a flute, and Ash plays the mandolin. Can you play? Do they even have fiddles in District 5?"

"I did, when I was a little," I say. "But that was a long time ago."

"Someday maybe -- "She cuts off and swallows, and looks down. "Never mind."

"What did I tell you?" Kalle shouts at me when I exit the elevator onto floor 5. His lip is cut where it must have hit the dummy during a dive. "I'm trying to help us both get home, and here you are, making--"

"Stop it, Kalle," I say. "That girl, Maple? She's not going to last past the Cornucopia. She can't even run without wheezing. I'm just trying to make it easier for her. She's scared to death, Cedar asked me to keep her calm, and I really don't see what harm--"

"Panem! Shan! Open your eyes!" He slams his hand into the glass table so hard I'm surprised it doesn't shatter, light though Kalle is. "Seven's playing you for all you're worth! The Games don't start in the Arena, they start here, right now. He knows the girl's dead walking, and he knows you have a soft spot for littles, so he'll use her to make you trust him and abandon our plan, and then I bet he'll chop your head off with that axe as soon as you turn your back," he shouts, and my stomach fills up with greenish horror, because I have a growing hunch that Kalle is exactly right. "Dead sister or no dead sister, that boy from 7 wants to go home. All of us want to go home, more than we want to make nice -- all of us, I guess, except you! You're too soft for these --"

The door pings and Maelln comes sailing in from her quarters, a few sprigs of white hair coming loose from her neat bun. "What's going on with you two?"

Kalle whirls around to face her. "Shan thinks making friends is more important than staying alive is what."

"Ah, yes, I heard. The tributes from 7," she says. "Don't mind me, I'm just looking at some old records." She taps the tablet in her hand, and the big screen rises out of the floor in front of the couch. "Show me the tribute chart from the 45th Games."

The loading screen pops up for a second before a chart of twenty-four names and photos appears on the screen, all in grey except for _Maelln Daren, 5/F._ "Long time ago, wasn't it? Zoom in," says Maelln, but the difference of brunette Maelln on the screen and white-haired Maelln next to me is out of my mind now because in the _7/F_ slot is the name _Willow Skogen._

"46th," says Maelln, and the chart with District 2's Livonia Swain highlighted appears. She zooms in again on 5, leaving 7 visible. "Pacolet Ceresa and Moreen Malotten. They fought hard, you know. I don't know if you're old enough to remember them," she says, and there two districts below them is _Noah Skogen_. She prattles on as she flips through the 47th, 48th, and 49th.

"Now, 50th was a big year. Quarter Quell! Feel lucky you didn't get reaped in that one. Twice the tributes! You would have been still a little, but do you remember that Reaping Day, Shan?" No one could forget that Reaping Day, the only one I was in the Home for. I stood in the thirteen-year-old's enclosure and bit my nails until they were bloody, absolutely positive my name was going to come out of the girls' reaping ball, elaborately decorated as befit the years' status as a Quarter Quell.

"Strizak, Wigan, Olivet and Milinda," she says, zooming in again and leaving, as always. District 7 visible. _Holly Skogen_. She flips through the next four years, reading off each District 5 tribute's name, before she gets to the current year, no tributes yet in grayscale. _Cedar Skogen. Maple Skogen_.

"Shan, will you come with me for a second? Help me pick out my dress for the opening night gala," and she gets up and walks towards her quarters. I obediently follow her into her room, which is even bigger than mine. The white door smoothly closes behind us with a soft sound.

"What are your thoughts?" she says.

"Thoughts? There's…there were a lot of Skogens in that batch," I say. "Do you think anyone else has noticed?"

"Noticed? I'm sure someone or other has," she replies. "District 7 is big, probably has about fifty thousand people in total. Six major settlements."

"Do you think anyone's ever commented on it?"

"Commented? Complained, you mean?" Maelln asks, raising her eyebrows. "That would imply that the line of Skogens coming out of that bowl wasn't an accident. That, Shani-ke, would be treason."

"So you think -- "

"I swept the room. It's the only safe place in the apartment. No bugs. Say what you want."

"You think Cedar and Maple getting reaped in the same year was deliberate."

Maelln snorts. "Shani-ke, I know it was." She pulls up the screen again showing the current lineup of tributes. "Look at their stats. Maple's a full five foot six and she's starving. If she'd been starving all her life, there's no way she'd be that tall. Look at the kids from 12, then look at her. They're the same age, but they're tiny compared to her. Even the boy's shorter. No, this definitely isn't an accident. Something went wrong there. That family's been doing something to piss off the Capitol, and they've been doing it for a while considering how many of them got reaped. Someone probably engineered it so that District 7 would have a hard year and everyone would have to sign up for tesserae -- especially considering how big a family they have no one would be surprised that all the kids of reaping age would have their names down. Considering how thin she is, I'm guessing maybe about a year and a half she hasn't been getting enough to eat. She dropped that weight quickly. Then on Reaping Day those names come out of the ball together…"

Guilt pangs in my brain. "Do you think Cedar's trying to -- did you hear Kalle -- ?"

"Heard every word Kalle said. Cedar's a Skogen," Maelln says. "None of the Skogens have made a single kill, all five of them in the Games."

"I think Kalle's still scared that I'm going to side with them instead of him," I say. "But I'm not. I'll help Kalle in the Arena. I really will."

"Of course. You'd have to be an idiot to ally with the Skogens. I'll have a talk with Kalle," she says, sitting down on her bed. Her white clothing and white hair camouflage her into the sheets more effectively than any of my plant dyes would to a forest. "Kalle's doing what he needs to do. He's building a wall. On one side is you, me, and everyone else from District 5 he wants to go back to if he wins. Other side, everyone else, no matter how much they don't deserve to be on the other side. He lets that wall spring a hole and he'll be gone, so when you say that his wall might not be entirely mistake-proof, of course he'll be angry."

"What do you think I should do about Maple?"

"Do? Shani-ke. There's nothing to do about those two," says Maelln. "If it makes you feel better to be kind to the Skogens, by all means do it. The Capitol will look at it as your seeing your Rivassa in her. No harm done." She shrugs and smiles as if she was offering me candy.

"Kalle's right," I say. "I am too soft."

"Of course you are, Shani-ke, and you know what that means?" She flops down on the bed and the only thing distinguishing her from the surrounding sheets is her face, slightly less snowy white than the rest of her. "It means you're the kind of human that the world needs and the Hunger Games aims to get rid of. You may be soft, but you're not weak." She brings her hands to her scalp and pulls her fingers through the white strands. "Dinner should be ready soon. I'll send for Kalle afterwards. Why don't you get cleaned up?"

I am almost out the door before I remember. "Er. Maelln?"

"Yes?"

"Kalle…Kalle came into my room last night. Said he was scared because Heliquo was -- "

"What?" Maelln sits bolt upright, her lips pulled back.

"Is he a -- "

"The Games," she says. "It…it did things to him. He killed so many and now…he's sick. What did he do? Did he touch Kalle?"

"Kalle said he was just sitting there. Watching when he was sleeping."

"That's…that's still completely outside what I agreed to tolerate from him. I'll deal with him. You focus on training and leave Heliquo to me. Go on, take a shower so Fart-face doesn't give me shit about District 5 girls stinking."

When I come out of the shower, everyone is seated at the table already, and Heliquo seems to be studying his food with the most intensity I've ever seen someone look at poached fish.

"Tomorrow you'll get to show the Gamemakers what you can do for fifteen minutes. They'll start it after lunch and go by district," announces Maelln. "Then you come back up here, and after 12 goes they'll announce the training scores on the news. You probably won't net sponsors from training: I've only seen people get training sponsors it they score above a ten, and usually that's 1 and 2 only. Next day is all interview prep. I'll work with each of you on your image. Heliquo's got somewhere to be, so unfortunately he won't be able to help you out." She smiles as prettily as she can at Sartovace. "Then your prep team will take you. You'll have the same designer as you did in the parade, and usually the mentors that aren't from 1 or 4 are cursing that little fact, but I trust the Darvulias to not make you look like fools when you put your clothes on." She takes a satisfied slurp of blueberry soup. "Now…"

It is late at night when I wake up, the familiar pressure in my gut telling me that I'm not going back to sleep until I relieve myself. I slip out of bed, careful not to wake Kalle, who is sound asleep on his side of the pillow barrier, and tiptoe down the hall to the bathroom.

"…a complete betrayal, Maelln, I should -- " Voices behind Maelln's door.

"Betrayal of what?" Maelln cuts the air. "It was him that betrayed --"

"You keep his secret. I keep yours. That was the agreement we had." The Capitol affect marks the other speaker as Sartovace. Or is it? I listen closer. The other person's speech isn't quite as fluttery as Sartovace, and their words are edged with a sinister bite. "What makes this one different? Why did you have to say that? This child is going to be dead in two days anyway, so why not let him just have a look?"

"It's not just a look," Maelln snaps. "If it's Heliquo, it's never just a look. He's sick. He's sick in the head and he needs to see a doctor, not a sleeping child. I don't want him near my tributes, and he's gone. He's going to the resort on the 3 border."

"Your tributes? My dear child, they are not your tributes, just like this is not your room, or your food, or your clothes on your back. Remember who you are," says the man's voice. "Remember who you belong to."

"Heliquo isn't coming back before the Games. I made sure of it. Now leave."

A slap rings out from inside the room. "You don't get to tell me what to do, you hideous freak! To think that I ever --"

I run down the hall as quietly as I can, use the bathroom and run back to bed, my heart beating sideways, like a knife.

The Trained Tributes are by and large lounging around at training the next morning, probably so as not to tire themselves out for their big moments in front of the Gamemakers. I mostly practice staff for the morning, and Kalle is across the room shooting and stabbing targets. When the lunch bell rings, I'm caught in line behind Andrew and Luxor, the two male Trained Tributes.

"…that one from 6, I think he could smash my head between his hands. Should we…"

"He's dangerous. Maybe we should ask him to join, get him while he's sleeping after the rest are gone." Luxor says blithely.

"I say get him right at the start. He's not smart enough to join us," says Andrew, and laughs.

"Any others you think we should do?"

"Man, Tamora's acting strange lately. Think she might flip on us?"

"She's your district partner. I don't know shit about that girl."

"The others will be easy. 6 guy, might be a fight, but it's all little kids and starvers from there out. District 5, those two might put up a- "

"Shh!" Luxor gestures to me.

"What does it even matter?" Andrew says, even louder. "One each of them, and six of us! Simple math, moron."

I hear a hiccuping sob come from behind me, from the girl from District 9. She buries her face in her hands.

"Scared of us, Nine?" says Andrew. "Don't worry, I'll make it quick, just for you. I'll even do it so your parents still recognize you. Would you like that?" The girl cries out like an animal in pain and hunches over. "Come on, Nine. Can't know what you want if you don't say please, otherwise I'm going to think that's a no."

I don't even realize the exact moment when my hands curl into fists, but I find my knuckles are completely white.

"Would you like it? Quick and painless? Say yes or no, easy as that."

The girl lets out another long, wordless wail, her shaking knees seemingly moments away from buckling.

"Leave her alone." The boy from Nine steps in front of his district partner, his mouth a nearly invisible line as he looks at Andrew. "Come on, Marcella. Don't listen to him." He puts an arm around her and guides her away, the girl still sobbing.

Andrew turns to look at Luxor. "Gonna remember that one," he says. "Think I should mess up her pretty face before we do her, just because?"

"Lay off." Luxor's teeth audibly grind in his mouth.

I get my food and am halfway through a bowl of creamy potato soup when the director of the Center appears through the door. "Luxor Silverstreet, District 1 male!" she calls.

Luxor rises from his table confidently, and Andrew and Satin slap him on the back before he walks through the door to the gym. At the end of his allotted fifteen minutes, he doesn't reappear, so I assume he's gone back up to his apartment. Like clockwork, the director appears again. "Satin Villulia, District 1 female!"

Maple looks at me from the other side of my table as if she wants to say something, but the room is completely silent except for the ever-present hum of the Trained Tributes talking, mostly Andrew. He's trying to take advantage of Luxor's absence, most likely. After Valerian Lenox and Calpurnia Jasper are called, he still seems to be spewing a constant stream of words towards Tamora, who sits there nodding silently, until the director emerges from the District 3 girl's demonstration and calls him in.

As soon as Andrew disappears, the mood in the room shatters. The District 9 girl apparently isn't the only one he's been intimidating, because everyone who wasn't sitting next to their district partner seems to rush towards them and start talking at lightning speed. I look around for Kalle, but a pair of blank gray eyes meet mine before I find him. Tamora holds her gaze steady, and a hint of something I can't name passes between us. Solidarity? Pity?

Whatever it is, it is gone as soon as it appears, as fleeting as a firefly's flicker. Her eyes are again blank.

Kalle slides in front of me and sits down in the closest chair.. "That Four guy try to get you?"

I nod yes. "He asked me if I'd ever held a real weapon when I was practicing, but I just walked away."

"He asked me if I was ready to kill a real person with that knife I had instead of a sandbag. Should have told him I was ready to stick it up his -- "

"Kalle."

He seems to shrink. "Sorry, Shan." His copper wire bracelet glints in the fluorescent light.

Kalle and I sit in silence as the tributes from the other districts continue to chatter around us. Soon enough, Tamora Naiad disappears into the gym, and Kalle is called shortly afterward.

A few minutes have passed after Kalle leaves when Cedar comes over, hovering tenuously behind the chair Kalle left open. "Hi, Shan," he says softly.

"Hi," I say, and try to manage a smile. I think what I do passes, because he smiles too.

"Are you nervous about tomorrow?" he asks. I try to remember what tomorrow is. The interviews. Possibly my last full day alive.

"I haven't been thinking much about it," I answer honestly. "What I'm going to talk about and all."

"You've got your story already," he says. "Well, I'd think so. You saved that boy's sister, the one who said he loved you before he…last year, that."

"I'm waiting for my mentor to tell me, really," I say. "I'm thinking she probably knows better. I'd probably look awful if I tried to go out there on my own."

"Is your mentor okay?" he asks.

"One of them is," I say. "One of them's always drunk. But Maelln used to watch me when I was a little. She remembered me. I barely can recognize her, but she remembered me. Yours…do you think he'll help you any?"

"We have two. Blight and Adam. Blight drinks a bit, but not a lot. Not enough to make him mad. Adam…he's the one who hit Maple. He got me too, here." Cedar gestures to the upper right side of his chest. "But none of them won their Games on their interview. Maple's not good about it. She doesn't like being on stage alone. They might give her some medicine before they put her on, make her calmer."

"What are you going to talk about?"

"I really don't know either," he says. "I had a life, back in 7. I had my family, I had a girl. But…but she knows. They all know. They know I won't win. I just…I hope my family will visit us in the Forest of the Dead."

"What?"

"In District 7 when someone dies, their people will bury them in the forest and plant a tree over the grave, and the person's spirit lives in the tree. We go -- we went -- to visit our family in the forest on the equinoxes, and clean their graves and leave some food."

"Do you believe it?"

"I want to," he says, his eyes distant, perhaps remembering. Six Skogens standing around their sister's grave. Would they have planted a holly tree over her? District 5 has no such custom. When someone dies in District 5, they are simply burned in a plain wood coffin and the ashes are given to the family, if there's family to take them, and the family does what they will with them. After my mother died, the attendant at the District 5 crematorium kept saying she was in a better place now and not suffering anymore, but what the better place is, I can't say I know, or that I've thought about it much.

"Sitting all day in a tree playing my flute," he says. "I hope it's true. Do you know what I think the worst thing would be?"

"No. What?"

"If I die, and then I just wake up again but I'm not me anymore. I'm someone in 3 or 4 or 8 or 10, and I'm a kid again and I grow up and get reaped again, or I see my friends or family get reaped again, and there's no place without - "

"Shan Lorimer, District 5 female!"

"Time to go," I say, and push away from the table, and I feel four brown eyes burrowing into my back as I walk through the door.


End file.
